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In the newspaper advertising pages for my grocery store, there was a feature for “Administrative Professionals’ Day Balloons starting at 3.99—everyday low price.”

I assume that this is what used to be called “Secretary’s Day” which I always thought was nonsense. If a boss is treating his secretary right, she (do I need to say he/she?) will not need a special day. If he is not, she should get another job. If Secretaries need a special day, does it become something different if it is an Administrative Professionals’ Day? Administrative Professionals may feel demeaned by being called “secretaries.” I would feel demeaned if someone gave me a $3.99 floral-printed balloon that says “Thank you for all your hard work.” Yuck!

Most of the administrative professional/secretaries I have known work hard, do a lot of varied things very professionally, and I think they are splendid, capable people.

This whole thing is a nightmare of political correctness. We cannot assume that a boss is a man, we cannot assume that a secretary is a woman. We cannot call a secretary a secretary. Stores no longer have sales clerks, but associates. And we no longer have wars, we have overseas contingency operations. The absurdity just grows and expands.

And there is always, always, somebody that is offended. Somebody needs to say Stop!

What’s not to love? They both favor seizing control of large swaths of the economy, buying the votes of a majority with free goodies paid for with money stolen from a small minority, had identical positions on the Iraq war, and they both regularly bash and smear America,

There has been a loud public outcry in vulnerable communities such as inner cities like Detroit. Billed as the biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II, the Environmental Protection Agency held a “bedbug summit meeting” last Tuesday to answer to the public complaints.

Nine years ago, zealots at the Clinton administration’s EPA took Dursban off the shelves. They banned the pesticide chlorpyrifos to praise and enthusiasm from the media and environmentalists. It was the most available pesticide to deal with bedbugs, cockroaches and other noxious pests. It had been available for 30 years in some 800 products in 88 countries around the world.

But despite widespread protest in the scientific community, EPA Chief Carol Browner erased Dursban from the shelves. “EPA has gone to great lengths to present a highly conservative, worst case, hypothetical risk based in large part on dubious extrapolations… and exaggerated risk estimates,” said Michigan State University toxicologist J.I Goodman in a typical response.

Even Dr. Alan Hoberman, the principal researcher whose data Browner cited, told the Detroit News he disputed the agency’s interpretation of his findings.

Such critics were also ignored by the press—as was evidence that the nation’s urban poor would be most vulnerable to a ban. Children’s insect-bite allergies and cockroach-induced allergens outnumber pesticide poisoning by 100:1. “Hardest hit will be lower-income families in cities like Detroit, who can ill afford a weekly house call from the Orkin man,” warned News writer Diane Katz, now with the Fraser Institute. “Yet that is precisely what the EPA is recommending as a substitute for a couple squirts from a can of bug spray.”

Nine years later, there is still no satisfactory substitute for Dursban. The EPA, always ready to do the bidding of environmental activists, also banned DDT. That was responsible for millions of deaths in the developing world from malaria, which could have been prevented by spraying huts with a bit of DDT. Ill-conceived regulations have consequences.

The EPA Administrator who approved the ban of Dursban is now the “Climate Czar” in the Obama administration. She remains a zealot.